DeSantis’ political fate could be at risk
As virus cases spike, he fights perception state going in wrong direction
Amid outcries over Florida’s beleaguered unemployment system and the debate over COVID-19 shutdowns and reopening, Gov. Ron DeSantis could always point to one thing: his state’s relatively low infection numbers.
One conservative magazine wrote in May, when the state seemed to have avoided the worst of the coronavirus outbreak, “Where Does Ron DeSantis Go to Get His Apology?”
Then the daily positive numbers started to tick up. And then they started to soar.
Now the Republican governor is fighting the perception that Florida is a state heading in the wrong direction, just as it prepares to host the return of professional sports.
“With 31,299 new cases in the past week alone, Florida has emerged as a new hot spot for
COVID-19,” wrote Democratic Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, a potential DeSantis opponent in 2022, in calling for a statewide order mandating masks in public. The pandemic “threatens to spiral out of control,” she added.
DeSantis, a key ally of President Donald Trump, has been considered a possible candidate for the presidency in 2024. But his political fate could depend on how well the next several months go in Florida, one expert said.
“If the number of infected Floridians continues to rise, and in particular, if we see a big increase in deaths, I think that would have a pretty negative effect on his political future,” said Aubrey Jewett, a professor of political science at the University of Central Florida.
State Sen. Joe Gruters, the Florida GOP chair, has been one of DeSantis’s biggest backers during the pandemic, despite talk in the winter that the governor was pushing to replace him.
“Gov. DeSantis has shown remarkable leadership both in Florida and nationally during these extraordinary times,” Gruters said in a statement. “His swift actions have saved countless lives, starting with Florida’s most vulnerable populations in long-term care facilities.”
‘He paid a political price’
DeSantis was popular, even among many Democrats, early into his term in 2019.
He separated himself from former Republican Gov. Rick Scott by ending the state’s opposition to medical marijuana and pardoning the Groveland Four, four Black teens falsely accused of rape in 1949.
But in early 2020, the COVID-19 crisis erupted. And from the beginning, as other Republican governors took strong initial steps issuing stay-at-home orders,
DeSantis was reluctant to go that far — even after Walt Disney World shut down in mid-March and Orange and other counties shut down in late March.
DeSantis didn’t issue a shutdown order until April, only after Trump began acknowledging the need to flatten the curve.
“Whether he deserved it or not, his popularity did not increase as almost every other governor in the countries did — even in, ironically, many of the states that had much higher death counts than Florida,” Jewett said, including New York and Gov. Andrew Cuomo. “But that’s because those governors took visible, active steps that the public wanted to see. … And when Governor DeSantis was much slower in locking down the state, he paid a political price for that.”
Scott was famous for putting on his Navy hat and appearing in charge during a crisis, such as when hurricanes hit the state. But DeSantis differed from Scott in that approach as well, letting local governments create patchwork rules and generally following Trump’s lead.
“I don’t know why he didn’t do [what Scott did],” Jewett said. “I can only imagine it’s because it just doesn’t fit his leadership style and personality. … [But] I think it’s almost it’s almost impossible to deny that he seemed to be influenced by President Trump’s rhetoric and policy.”
So far, the majority of new cases has been made up of younger people, with the median age dropping into the 30s and even into the 20s. DeSantis has seized on those numbers to show that a spike among younger, healthier people shouldn’t correlate with a rise in deaths.
“They are less at risk, there’s no doubt about that,” DeSantis said Thursday.
The NBA, Major League Soccer and Major League Baseball players about to descend upon the state fall right into that age group, however. Already, some players and team officials are expressing concerns about whether playing in Florida is a good idea.
“At a time like this, I can’t imagine making any decision that might put my family’s health and well-being at even the slightest risk,” said Los Angeles Laker Avery Bradley, who is skipping the NBA season restart at Walt Disney World.
‘That palatability is gone’
Gwen Graham, a former Democratic candidate for governor who lost in the 2018 primary, has been one of the most vocal of DeSantis’ critics.
“[He] has eradicated any goodwill he created with those not inclined to support him from the get-go,” Graham said. “I no longer hear that ‘DeSantis isn’t as bad as I thought he would be.’”
Graham, who didn’t rule out another run for governor, said DeSantis’ team “initially plotted to make him palatable in November 2022 to Democrats That is gone.”
DeSantis has stressed that his March order preventing infected patients from being moved back into long term care facilities as a key difference between Florida and New York, where he is in a political feud with Cuomo.
More than 6,000 nursing home and long-term facility residents have died in New York compared with 1,600 in Florida, even as Cuomo received national praise for his handling of the outbreak.
But now New York’s daily positive cases are dropping fast, and Cuomo has instituted a quarantine on Floridians entering his state to match the one DeSantis instituted for New Yorkers in March. and Independents. palatability
‘The tough guy caucus’
Larry Sabato, founder of the Center for Politics and a political science professor at the University of Virginia, said the death total in Florida will play a key role for DeSantis’ political reputation if the spike continues. But he doubted the governor would suffer much in a Republican presidential primary in 2024.
“Republican activists are skeptical of masks and distancing, cheer President Trump for not wearing one, and have made it a machismo sign of manhood and patriotism not to pay any attention to scientists and health professionals,” Sabato said. “Since DeSantis is being seen as a member of the tough guy caucus, his stances won’t hurt him in GOP primaries.
“You know what might hurt him?” he added. “Being one of Donald Trump’s favorites. Whether Trump is ousted in November or squeaks into a second term, he’s unlikely to be a popular figure in 2024, at least outside of the Republican Party.”